Rokid is a company focused on user experience that designs and develops smart speakers and AI assistant chips. It is headquartered in Hangzhou, China with R&D labs in Beijing and San Francisco. The document discusses two case studies on usability testing for augmented reality glasses - one for integrating speakers and one for a retail UI. Both highlighted the importance of stable interactions, clear triggers for content, and user understanding of the technology.

1. Rokid
U s e r E x p e r i e n c e R e s e a r c h
P a r i s F a n

2. Designed and developed mart speakers that
won design awards such as red dots, IF and etc.
Designed and manufactured AI assistant chips
to make your own smart speakers, smart
appliances, and or in-car solutions
Readily available SDK and Developer kits and
open sourced voice platform
Rokid
Family

3. striving to provide the most
beautiful design and a superior
user experience
We are a company that focuses a lot on user experience, starting with our CEO who would serve
24/7 as a customer representative answering people’s questions

5. Worldwide
We are based in the bay area with our headquarter in Hangzhou, china and another research lab in Beijing.
R & D lab working on voice-controlled
AI assistant algorithm
A-lab
Beijing, China
Innovation lab working on AR glasses
and next generation smart speaker
R-lab
San Francisco, US
Designing and developing smart speakers,
manufacturing voice-controlled AI chip, open
sourced voice platform
Headquarter
Hangzhou, China

6. Core Competences
There are some core values that differentiate us from the rest of the competitors
60%
$4.9
M
It’s estimated that the company worths
more than $4.9 Million US dollars in
2017.
Market Value
We are managed to limit the wake
words to only 2 syllables to
accommodate for the best possible user
experience
Wake Word
Syllable
60% more of our employees hold a
master and/or phd degree from
renowned universities including
Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley and etc.
People
2
We focus 100% on usability and design
Usability & Design
100%
A number of them also acquired skills
and experience from industry leaders
including Alibaba, Apple, Microsoft,
Samsung and etc.

7. Augmented Reality (AR)
Refers to technology that incorporates real-time inputs from the existing world to create an output that combines both
real-world data and some programmed, interactive elements which operate on those real-world inputs.
Sources: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/augmented-reality-ux/

8. How AR change usability
There are several things we have to consider
does not restrict users’ movements in
physical environment
Environment
Respond contextually to new external
information and account for changes to
users’ environments. e.g.,ambient light
sensor; proximity sensor
Adaptivity
In addition to touch, users can utilize voice
and gesture control in real time and/or
combine them all. e.g., voice command to
take pictures (while playing AR games）
Multi-sense
Interaction
Sources: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/augmented-reality-ux/

9. Case study #1
A R G l a s s S p e a k e r U s a b i l i t y Te s t

10. The tradeoff is between speaker sound and
quality versus what scenarios will we have for
the speaker, and thus our glasses
“ Usability is about
making the most optimal
choice for users while
ensuring the least amount
of resources and costs
allocated to design and
development.”
Do we want to listen to music/watch movies
with our glasses?
Do we want to use glasses to hear short
commands?
How long are we going to use the glasses for?
Evaluating
AR
Speakers
By Mingyue
Wired headphone set

11. We ran 3 rounds of tests, which is a basically a
trial and error process. Ensuring the same
testing materials and environment as controlled
independent variables while conduct tests on
things we need as dependent variables.
1. Evaluated cellphone receiver’s volume and
quality against speakers
2. Compared 2 pairs of speaker models with 1
ME structure
3. Compared 1 pair of speaker model with 2
ME structures
Process
The size of receiver is smaller enough and yet
the sound of it is too little to be heard without
sticking speaker buds to your ear holes (given
the testing environment is only 40-50 db)
The first test result led to the finding of a
speaker that’s 1mm more than the original
receiver size. Te second test was conducted to
verify the sound quality and loudness of the
speaker under the original ME sound cavity
infrastructure. The second test result came out
thrilling as we were able to hear a better sound
quality of various test sound materials
compared with the first one.
And yet the third test was conducted for the
sole purpose of minimizing the thickness and
width of the glasses leg, making it more slim
and fashionable like everyday glass. We placed
the speaker in the back end of the glasses leg
and created the front sound cavity which
achieved a similar kind of result as the speaker
placing in the front of the glasses leg.

12. Test various sound materials in real
environment if not, try to mimic the
environment by creating noise
We added sound amplifier to make sure that
the there is enough current to drive the
speaker and then used oscilloscope to monitor
the waveform of electronic signals to make
sure the volume does not go as high as it will
exceed the frequency range of the speaker and
produces the current sound noise
Takeaway
Recorded the volume of each test participant’s
subjective feeling of each piece of sound and
compared between two different speaker
models

13. Case study #2
A R G l a s s R e t a i l U I Te s t

14. It’s the phrase one demo for one of our clients,
a top-tier online retailer in China.
During the Initial set up, I ensured that the
testing environment as real as possible:
Evaluating
Glass
Retail UI
• Previewing the video clips of the actual
environment of how our glasses will be
displayed at the offline store
• Staging two bags on the bookshelves of the
office to mimic the actual displaying shelves
at the store

15. We evaluated the usability of 3 different
versions of the UI layouts and elements
To minimized the first and last item biases, I
also randomized the order of 3 sets of layouts.
Used likert scale (with numerical scores from 1
to 5 with 1 being the most unfavorable and 5
being the most favorable) to evaluate
participants’ overall experience of satisfaction,
Interaction, and visual appeals.
Process

16. We assumed that when users look at the bag
with their glasses, the video will be played
automatically when triggered by patterns on
the bag.
However; Users had zero knowledge about:
• how to get the video playing (how to trigger
it),
• when or how it gets disappeared (because the
camera lost its focus of the marker on the
bag) and
• how to get it to come back (as it take
sometime for the marker to be processed
again so the focus has to stay put for a while)
Takeaway
Auto detection of patterns on the bag leads to
instability as users most of the time, do not
hold the bag still and tend to look around the
bag, fiddle with it and as a result, IMU tracking
is lost and thus, the content triggered by the
pattern is also lost.
Alternatively, we provide another product
design solution to cover the technical
constraints. Every time users want to play
something, we will ask for their confirmation/
permission to start or stop playing. This makes
a better experience for users as them will not
see content being constantly disappeared and
reappeared.

17. Any questions?
Gonglue Jiang, Chief Designer & Head of Product Research
gonglue@rokid.ai
Reynold Wu, Director of Product and Business Operation
reynold.wu@rokid.ai
Paris Fan, User experience Researcher
fanxing@rokid.ai